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Local Schools Target 'How to Read and Learn' / Their Array of Approaches Includes Specific Courses and Transition Programs

Posted on: Monday, 6 March 2006, 12:01 CST

By HOLLY PRESTIDGE

By the time students reach high school, teachers assume they know how to read.

But rising dropout rates and high numbers of U.S. high school graduates who can't read well have prompted many high schools, including in metro Richmond, to look at literacy programs for older students.

The approaches may be different at each school, but the intentions are the same.

-- "In high school, it's not learning how to read, but how to read and learn," said Christena Reiser, a teacher at Henrico County's Varina High School, which has a reading program for freshmen.

Varina's teachers work with the middle schools that feed the high school to identify students in the eighth grade who cannot read well.

Once in ninth grade, the students take a semesterlong course that teaches them not only the fundamentals of reading but comprehension strategies they can apply in other classes.

Reiser said she will see about 140 students this year. Most of them read on a middle school level or lower.

"Some of them put up the defense mechanisms and the 'I don't care' attitudes," Reiser said, because they are insecure about their abilities.

But the problem is more than just knowing how to read, she said. Students today don't have a purpose for reading.

Reiser calls it "a-literacy."

"We can read, but we don't want to," she said.

-- In Chesterfield County, seven high schools are part of a federal study on high school literacy.

Randi Smith, a Chesterfield instructional specialist, said the pilot program is being funded and studied by Johns Hopkins University. More than 200 ninth-graders are participating countywide.

The program works like this: During the first semester of school, students have a 90-minute reading class every day. During the second semester, they are in ninth-grade English classes but are using the reading strategies they learned during the first semester.

As in Varina's program, the students were identified in eighth grade.

Additionally, Chesterfield has applied-reading courses for students in grades 11 and 12 who need extra help. It is an elective course, and there are about 100 students taking it this year, Smith said.

-- Richmond school system spokeswoman Treeda Smith said the city's high school students take part in a number of literacy- related activities.

First, students learn about what kind of reading to expect in high school during the Freshman Seminar Program, which is a summer transition program for incoming freshmen. They get a look at high school textbooks and talk with teachers about what kinds of reading and assignments they can expect.

Students also take part in various reading programs, including Go Read, which is a metro Richmond program in which students, their parents and the community read and discuss the same books.

All four area school divisions take part in Go Read.

-- Hanover County school officials said individualized reading tutorials are available for any high school student who needs help.

Reiser said it is one thing to teach strategies to students, but teachers must be instructed on the same strategies so they can incorporate them into their classes.

"Before we were so bent on content that we would forget strategies," Reiser said.

Contact staff writer Holly Prestidge at hprestidge@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6945.

Source: Richmond Times - Dispatch

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